Nukes, girlfriend was right, should've listened
by Chaotic Neutralist
Summary: In which Allen makes a mistake and loses the only good thing going for him in the post-apocalypse. 2p!verse. 2p!America/OC. Six Word Story Challenge.


**Nukes, girlfriend was right, should've listened**

The United States was the last to fall.

I remember watching the lights raining down from afar. I wasn't in the blast zone, but a fire blazed across my skin, my face flushing as I fell to my knees as everything fell apart all at once. The war left its scars on everyone, but me? I had to do something, anything, or what little was left of the Union would fall apart.

So I joined the Resistance, and together, we took back the heartland.

"You know I don't love you," I softly murmured into her left ear, stroking the nape of her neck and pressing my forehead against hers.

That was the night before she was dispatched on a deep cover mission to the Japanese occupation zone in California. Feelings were irrelevant; I needed her for her infiltration skills.

There was never any illusion of romance between us. This was an affair of the flesh. Nothing more, nothing less.

She chuckled as she trailed her lips down my neck and whispered, "I know." I smiled and buried my face into her glossy, midnight hair as we embraced, the moth-ridden sheets gently crinkling as she curled into my chest. She shook her head and repeated, "I know."

In the morning, she was gone.

After the bombs fell, I thought that I knew what it meant to watch everything fall apart all at once, like a broken window letting all that you had idly watched occur outside of it in. I knew pain, and nothing could possibly hurt me ever again, not the way that those bombs did.

"She leaked information to the Imperials, sir." This information came three years into her operation. I wasn't hurt. I wasn't. I didn't particularly care about a mere tool like her, but unfortunately, her actions constituted treason against the Reunited States of America, and thus, her crimes were punishable by...well, I believe you can imagine that there is little mercy for her kind in this country.

So, while it was a shame, I found myself standing across from her in a dank, dark, dingy cell, towering over her bound figure with no nostalgia in my eyes.

I had one question: "Why?"

"It's not true, Allen," she replied after a brief pause. She met my gaze with a familiar emptiness in her own. It was the look I saw in the eyes of those blinded by radiation and post-traumatic stress, blinded with visions of the past. "I'm a mere tool, a scapegoat. And sooner or later, the real traitors will rear their ugly heads, and you'll regret this day very, very much."

"Please don't make this harder than it needs to be," I sighed, massaging my forehead and twirling a nail-impaled baseball bat.

I paused in my movement, swinging the bat down on her shoulder. There is a sweet crack as bone pierces flesh and a red fountain spews forth from the wound.

To her credit, she doesn't scream. All she does is stare blankly.

"I told them nothing. It's your advisors, I swear," she repeated in that same tone of voice as the night she left me, shaking her head. I scowled, eyebrows furrowing. How dare this...this _stranger_ pretend to be the woman that I once knew.

"As if I would believe that." I lowered the bat and crossed my arms, sighing.

"I gave you my everything—" She began, fury in her eyes, but I didn't let her finish.

"Not everything." I paused, closing my eyes. "Not...everything."

And I swung down again with all of my might, not even flinching at the resonating snap that followed, because there is no forgiveness for a monster like that.

But I should've listened, because she was right. She was always right.

It was a few months later that she somehow managed to escape her prison, and then another few months later that my advisors' treachery came to light. But by then, she had already defected to the bloodsucking Canadian Empire.

I once thought that I knew what it meant to watch everything fall apart all at once. I was wrong about that, too. Most importantly, however, I thought that I didn't love her, and that was my biggest mistake of all.


End file.
